If you’re ever involved in a collision with your Tesla, there’s a good chance you can retrieve dashcam footage of the incident—provided the USB drive and glovebox survive. However, sometimes they don’t, and even dashcam footage may not be sufficient.
In such cases, you can request a full recording from Tesla, along with a detailed data report showing comprehensive information about your vehicle’s performance during the collision. Shortly after any impact, your Tesla automatically uploads its crash log and related data to Tesla’s servers when possible, even using the low-voltage battery if the high-voltage pyro fuses are triggered.
Hopefully, you’ll never need this, but here’s how to request a Tesla Vehicle Data Report and what you can expect in the report.
How to Request a Report
Tesla has a simple, automated process for owners to request a Vehicle Data Report. To do so, simply go to Tesla’s Data Association Page and log into your Tesla Account.
From there, you’ll see a form that contains several options. Under “Regarding,” you’ll choose “Data Privacy Request,” and in the next selection, choose “Obtain a Copy of My Data.”
Tesla will then ask you to choose a vehicle that’s attached to your account and a range of dates for which you want data.
Tesla will provide details for the whole date range you specify, so it’s best to keep it small. Once you hit Submit, Tesla will start processing the request. Collision data is kept for an extended period of time, enabling people to go back and find data as required.
Within 30 days, and often much sooner, Tesla should e-mail you back with the report in PDF format and a CSV sheet containing all the raw information related to the request. This information is available for any country in which Tesla sells cars. If your country is outside of Tesla’s regular sales zones, you can try reaching out anyway, but we’re not sure if they will retain your data or not.
Tesla can also send you footage and data even if the incident wasn’t recorded as a collision – they’ll send you whatever is available – for any specific timeline you request.
Tesla Vehicle Data Report
The report is several pages long and comes in a nicely formatted PDF package. It breaks down the incident into various sections that help highlight what happened during the event. The first page summarizes the incident by highlighting key events and metrics like Autopilot use and speed.
Summary & Event Information
The Summary and Event Information sections are on the left side of the first page. The summary section is a text version of what happened during the event, reporting the time of the incident, speed, and whether seat belts were used, among other details.
The event information section includes some high-level information, such as the location of the incident, whether dashcam recordings are available, and the date and time.
Driver Log Data Overview
The Driver Log Data Overview section focuses on a few Tesla features and shows whether they were enabled at the five-second mark before the incident, one second before the incident occurred, or at the time of the incident. Tesla will show whether Autosteer / FSD, Driver Monitoring, Cruise Control, and Manual Brakes were used at all of these points. They will also show the status of the driver’s seat belt. Later in the report, Tesla will show graphs for each of these features so that you can see if they changed over the course of the incident.
Speed and Collision
The Speed and Collision section shows a timeline-based graph of the vehicle’s speed at the time of collision, four seconds before the collision, and four seconds after. The vertical line on the graph represents the collision, giving you a better understanding of what happened before and after the incident. However, in the following pages of the report, Tesla provides numerous time-based graphs that highlight many other metrics, including brake pedal use, accelerator, steering wheel torque and more.
Area of Detected Impact
This area of the report shows the vehicle from the top-down view and which areas detected an impact.
Time-Based Graphs
The rest of the report includes detailed graphs showing various vehicle metrics before, during, and after the incident.
Some of these graphs include the vehicle’s speed, steering wheel torque, steering wheel angle (how much the wheel was being turned and in which direction), accelerator and brake pedal usage, and pressure of the brake master cylinder. Tesla will even show whether any doors were opened during the seconds leading up to or following the incident.
If Tesla has a video of the incident, that will also be provided as a link for you to download. All the other information - the charts and graphs - raw information is also provided in a CSV file, which you can open in software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
To wrap up, Tesla is currently the only car manufacturer in the world that can provide this information to its customers at the drop of a hat. This information is immensely valuable, and it could be the difference between someone paying an insurance claim or being charged with a crime.
Tesla produces some of the safest vehicles on the planet, and their commitment to safety and reporting is spectacular. We’re happy to see Tesla continue to take steps to better help their customers.
Thanks to Bilal Sattar for sharing his report. We hope you never need to use this, but it’s good to know that it’s available.
